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In article <430@svax.cs.cornell.edu> doug@svax.cs.cornell.edu (Douglas Campbell) writes:
>My sister has some surveying software that runs on a Northstar under CP/M,
>and she wants to know if it can run on an IBM PC.  Any help much appreciated.
>
>						Doug Campbell
>						doug@svax.cs.cornell.edu

If the machine is a real PC, i.e. 8088-based, then the answer is to swap
out the 8088 CPU for the NEC V-20.  This is a pin-compatible processor
which has hardware emulation of the 8080 CPU.  There are then packages
available which will allow you to switch the V-20 into emulation mode
and run under CP/M.  Your best bet is to check recent issues of BYTE,
etc. for packages such as 'RUN-CP/M'.  The V-20 chip goes for $15-20.
from numerous mail-order houses.

Your two problems may be: since the Northstar uses the Z-80, the
software in question may be written to take advantage of the Z-80's
extended instructions.  If so, the V-20 won't help you.  The other
problem is that the Northstar uses hard-sectored diskettes, as I
recall.  This means you will probably have to transfer object code,
data file, etc. via serial transfer with something like Xmodem or
Kermit, since the hard-sectored diskettes will be unreadable on a
PC, even with one of the format translator programs such as Uniform. 

					Bob Halloran, Consultant
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